Love. It’s such a complicated, complex topic. It is a topic of topics. Mad, deep, romantic love. It’s all so much fun.

Not!

I’m going to be blunt, romantic love sucks. It’s powerful, crazy, exciting, beautiful, and amazing, but it sucks. Not all the time, especially if you fall in love with someone who doesn’t exist.

Have you ever fallen in love with someone that no longer exists? You probably think I am crazy, so let me break it down for you.

I’m not talking about imaginary friends or even celebrity crushes. I’m talking about really falling for someone and then growing apart only to find that, as time has passed, you both have changed.

Falling for someone that has changed, that isn’t who they use to be is terrible, but what is really exhausting is getting over them. It's like someone you loved died but someone who looks just like them is standing right in front of you, looking you in the eye and talking to you. It's them but not them.

I hope none of you can relate to this because it felt like I discovered a whole new type of pain.

Falling for him was like a Taylor Swift song gone extremely wrong. It started out amazing then turned into nothing but agonizing pain.

You see, I was head over heels for this guy. I was so invested, so convinced that we would be something someday, but I was wrong. We ended up being just friends, and now, he’s out there living life being the amazing person I know he will always be.

After a while I had to grasp reality, he and I were never going to be anything more than friends. I had to begin the process of moving on. This process was long, exhausting, painful, and annoying. One day I was back at square one, other days I didn’t think of him once.

I knew I was in love, but I didn’t know who with. The boy he was became a memory to me. We hardly saw each other or even talked. He grew, I grew, and we changed. I am extremely proud of who he and I have become, but the boy I was in love with wasn’t the boy that stood before me.

I still love him, I will never stop loving him. I just don’t love him romantically. I love him the way I love my friends, the way I love other people. I wish him the best and always will.

I fell in love with who I thought he was, who I remember him as and it was painful. It hurt so bad to see the body that use to hold this immaculate personality I once was in love with.

Don’t get me wrong, he is still an incredible person, he just isn’t the same. Maybe he grew up, maybe he went through something that I wasn’t aware of. Whatever it was, he changed and that’s okay. What isn’t okay is the fact that I knew he wasn’t the same, I knew he grew and changed, but it didn’t change the fact that I was crazy about him. I could look at him and still see the same person, from a distance, he was still him and that hurt. He was so close but so far.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this but I’ll tell you, it’s heartbreaking. Not only did I lose someone I loved romantically, I lost an amazing friend. Losing him felt like someone was tearing my heart out, putting it back in my chest, only to tear it out again.

Sooner or later, I had to let go, I had to move on. I realized he was no longer him, just because he looked like the one I loved, he wasn’t. He changed, he grew, we both did. We just didn’t grow together.